Planning, Mockups, and the Lack Thereof

Filed under: Design, Planning, Rants — Micheal on November 8th, 2007

The mockup period during a project is very important. This is the time in which all of the ideas originally discussed during initial planning (which should have been turned into a brief) will be incorporated into either design or call to action documentation. During this time interaction design, usability and information architecture are taken into consideration. Overall concepts are presented to the client. Revisions occur. There is a decision before going to production.

Again, the mockup period is very important.

I question why some think otherwise. Why do people skip roughly 20% of the entire project and wonder why the end result is nothing like the brief? This is no new problem.

Mockups can be used in all sorts of projects, from print to application development. This can also be considered prototyping or comps. Short list, but I recommend the following reading:

http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/mock-ups.html
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/method